Update: Philips sent us a new white OLED square, here's our hands-on review of it
The kind folks from Philips have sent me a couple of OLED light panel samples to review. Philips have started to offer these panels online, but you can't actually get them yet. The kits are not ready, and the one I got was without a proper box and manuals. As this is just a lamp, really, it's pretty simple to use. You get a driver-box, that's got a dimmer and an on/off switch. I also got two panels:
- Small rectangle in blue color (Height 43.7mm, 47.4mm)
- White freeform (height 39.4mm, width 73.1mm)
The first thing you notice is how thin these panels are. It is amazing at first to have a light source so thin. After a while you get used to it, and now it seems strange that normal lamps have to be so big! Once these kind of lights are available, I'm sure no one will want to go back...
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The freeform one has a lot of 'speckles' on it. It turns out that it got damaged in the shipment (or perhaps Israeli customs, who handled it and opened it, are to blame). Philips promised to send another white panel, so I'll be able to post new photos in a week or so. UPDATE: Philips indeed sent me a new, working white OLED square...
Those panels have 1,000 cd/m2 brightness, are up to 20 lm/w in efficiency, and Philips say that the lifetime is 10,000 hours. They are also very thin - 1.8mm in fact. Here's how they look when lighted:
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The panels are not very bright, and you need several of those panels to create a lamp. In fact when Philips showed their table lamp design, it had more then 10 panels. So if you're thinking of ordering those for a test, be sure to order enough.
I also took a few short video clips, showing the panels:
Altogether, it's great to finally see an OLED light panel that you can actually buy. Philips plans to make these into commercial products by next year, and it'll be interesting to watch what will designers create with such beautiful and thin lighting source!
Comments
how come they send you all this cool stuff? just because of the blog?
amazing...
can i have one?!
Did you happen to get a price? I bet that 10 panel lamp is a paycheck or two (or more!)
As seen at the Philips site, light fixture makers will have to get pretty innovative regarding how they make lamps. Existing light fixtures with a bulb with a point source of light now do not appear they will work with the new panels. Now you need many panels with a lot of surface area to get the same amount of light. CFL's could fit in existing fixtures (sometimes), I can't see this working for OLEDs. Nonetheless, pretty exciting. I purchased three LED lights 5.1 watts total to replace 75 watts total. Payback 1 year, 5 year expected life.
Could you please tell us how much current each square light draws? Or better yet, do you know of any online resources which would contain technical data on these panels?
I can't find technical data on these things anywhere. I'm not sure how they are expecting people to develop new product ideas around these if there aren't any technical specs out there besides physical dimensions.
I bought 2 of the square ones and cannot get them to work w/ the supplied driver/power supply, anyone know what input voltage these need? I emailed Philips about tech specs. If I get anything I'll let you guys know.
beautiful, especially that you can shape the form of the light you want to have.